


Glass Darkly

by TheWhiteLily



Series: Glass Darkly [1]
Category: Smallville
Genre: Does not end happily but the sequel does, Future Fic, I mean it, Idiots in Love, M/M, Misunderstandings, Still best friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-01-22
Packaged: 2018-05-15 14:29:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5788846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWhiteLily/pseuds/TheWhiteLily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are some things best friends don’t talk about, if they want to keep being best friends.  A lot of things, actually.  Superman.  Lois.  Clark’s… relationship… problems.  Lex’s new ring.  Fortunately, Clark and Lex seemed to be getting better, recently, at the whole nonverbal communication thing.  A <i>lot</i> better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Glass Darkly

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Blue Yeti and Megabat for the beta. :)

 

Clark sometimes thought about the ancient prophetic paintings on the cave walls back in Smallville, and of Lex’s interpretation of what it meant to be fated enemies.

Lex was right; it _was_ comforting to know that he would always have an equal, someone who knew his strengths and weaknesses and who would keep him thinking, keep him from straying, keep him working for the good of mankind.  Comforting to know that that equal was his most trusted friend.

Clark knew that Lex had gathered all the Kryptonite he could find into leaden underground bunkers; that he had everything he needed to destroy Clark at any time he wanted.  It was Clark’s job to be sure that Lex never needed to make the choice between destroying his friend and letting his friend destroy the world.

He was fairly sure that he knew which one Lex would choose, because Lex's moral compass had always tended to spin straight past arbitrary concepts of 'good' and 'evil' until it pointed due Clark.

Somehow the fact that Clark was guarding someone else’s conscience made it easier than when he was only guarding his own.

***

He saw the anger flash in Lex’s eyes as Clark told him he’d forgotten to give his landlord that month’s rent and rushed off to spin into the suit.  Super hearing was hell on his social engagements.

Fortunately, it was only a twelve car pile-up which took less than ten minutes to clean up, and he made it back just before the entrees arrived.

It occurred to Clark to wonder if he should be worried when Lex didn’t seem the least bit annoyed on his return.  Lex wasn’t usually as oblivious as Lois.  Possibly because Lex actually liked him.

***

Clark’s girlfriends never tended to last very long.  There was Lana, of course, who was an unmitigated disaster in a category all of her own.  There were the mutant psychopaths that came as a hazard of living in Smallville, and there was nothing that helped him bond with Lana, Chloe, and Lex more than having dated a few of them.

Metropolis had been different.  On his first lengthy stay, flying high on red Kryptonite and flashing money and power without a care, he’d managed to snag a different girl almost every night.  Kal hadn’t cared how badly he’d hurt them.  Still, it had still stopped being fun when they shrieked in pain, so when his father arrived to drag him home like a recalcitrant child, he’d left Metropolis still a virgin with one less crime on his conscience.

But there were a few relatively normal girls.  Not from Smallville, because there he was too well entrenched as The Property Of Lana Lang to attract anyone but Chloe and mutants. Normal girls at MetU.

Girls in his classes.  Girls in his study groups.  Girls in the cafeteria.  Girls who hung around near his college.

They smiled at him, caught his eye, dropped their books in front of him and touched his hands as he helped to pick them up again.

Most of the time, they’d quickly grow cold at his habitual excuses, but there’d been some who managed to stay close for long enough to want to get closer.

“I’m not…” he’d stutter as they pressed soft curves against iron-hard muscle, but they didn’t listen, and theirs weren’t the innocent, passionless kisses he’d shared with Lana, or the semi-drugged, debilitating kisses of a Kryptonite mutant.

When Kirstie had done that thing with her tongue, it had made him momentarily forget his own name – and other, more important things, that he could never, ever, allow himself to forget.  He’d managed to reign in the fire in his eyes in time, but…  He had guiltily ignored two calls for help waiting in the emergency room while her wrist was put in a cast, had written up her notes for her and carried her books for the next six weeks without fail.  She’d never tried to kiss him again, but he’d never wanted her to, given the way his stomach crushed with guilt whenever she looked at him.

With Miranda, there had been no broken bones, only a matching set of bruises, perfectly shaped like his hands around her shoulders as he clamped his eyes closed and forgot about his strength once again.  She wasn’t as understanding as Kirstie had been, wearing halter necks for the next week and telling her embellished version of the story to anyone who would listen.

Lex made the charges go away without comment, but Clark had vowed never again and perfected the stammering clumsy act that kept those few that hadn’t been warned off him well away.

***

When Lex turned up at Clark’s apartment for their regular Friday night outing wearing a new ring, Clark actually managed a believable excuse about an article he _thought_ he’d already have done but hadn’t quite finished.

Lex laughed it off, saying he was happy to wait, as he switched to the Luthor News Network business channel and folded himself crosslegged onto Clark’s threadbare couch.  

***

Clark had become a lot better at covering his reaction to Kryptonite over the years.  

Nothing could ever really prepare him for the soul-deep agony that it brought, but after nearly exposing his secret or dying for the fiftieth time by staggering back or passing out at an inconvenient time, he decided there really had to be a better way.  With his parents’ reluctant assistance, he’d taken a couple of days off school, claiming illness, and tried to accustom himself to functioning normally with low-grade Kryptonite poisoning.

He no longer immediately hit the floor, no longer stared at the grey-green veins on his skin in uncomprehending horror, and nowadays he had so many ready-made excuses floating on the tip of his tongue to make a quick escape that he could almost always get away without raising suspicion.

 _Almost_ always.

***

It was only a tiny chip of green.  With Lex on the couch, he could barely feel anything but a persistent itch between his shoulder blades as he hunched at his computer, trying to concentrate on his originally-fictitious article.

“Clark,” said Lex, putting a ringed hand on his shoulder and Clark felt the burn, felt the helplessness flow over him in a nauseated wave.  “Anything in particular you want on the pizza?”

“Nah,” said Clark, hoping that one syllable was an adequate response, since he wasn’t sure he could manage any more.

The Kryptonite flashed in the light of the television as Lex dialed, and Clark had to squint a little to see through his glasses as he turned back to his article.

***

It took Clark two weeks to realise the reason for the city’s sudden lull in crime.  He’d known he was spending more time with Lex than usual – when he visited Lex at work or at the penthouse, he usually stayed until he needed to excuse himself to attend to an emergency.  But in the past two weeks, not a single cry for help had interrupted them, so he’d ended up flying home in the small hours of the morning five times.

When he made the connection with Lex’s ring stripping his super hearing along with his other powers, he felt guilty and x-rayed the police files to find all the crimes that had occurred while he was tied up with his friend.

It wasn’t as bad as he’d feared, but he stopped dropping by and devoted himself to saving lives instead.

***

Clark occasionally caught himself wishing that humans weren’t quite so puny and insignificant.

Then he shook himself, told himself that it was just Kal-El speaking – that he was who he chose to be and that he chose to be Jonathan and Martha Kent’s son – and flew back into the burning building to rescue Lois.

He flicked his vision into x-ray as they flew and checked her unconscious form for any broken bones.  Her skeleton looked so fragile in his arms that for a moment he panicked, worried that he’d break her by accident.  He set her down in safety as quickly as he could and flew away before she could wake up and throw her arms around Superman’s neck.

***

A week later, Clark couldn’t avoid Lex any longer.  Technically, he’d been spending the evening with Lois, covering a charity function packed with the rich and famous.  But Lex, of course, was both, and Clark couldn’t hide from him there.

His friend and the accompanying wave of weakness from his ring popped up at his elbow whenever he least expected it.  After a couple of hours, Clark was a wreck, while Lois was just settling into her groove stalking the Contessa del Portenza for comments for their upcoming article on corporate corruption.

When Lex noted that he was looking ill and offered to drop him home, Clark agreed, desperate to break the nerve-wracking cycle any way he could.

He must have looked truly awful, because as he left, Lois gave him an uncharacteristic kiss on the cheek and an injunction to feel better soon.

Lex smirked at him in the limo, and Clark flushed as he told him to shut up.

“There it is,” laughed Lex.  His gesture brought the Kryptonite ring close enough to Clark’s face to wipe the red tinge away.  “I thought I’d have to do something drastic to bring that blush back.”

“Yeah?” demanded Clark, lifting his chin and feeling sure his pale and clammy cheeks couldn’t possibly manage another.  “Like what?”

Lex’s kiss managed to make him blush all the way through the shuddering pain of the hand cradling his cheek.  He couldn’t tell whether it was the Kryptonite or the kiss that set his stomach to roiling – was that emotion he was feeling desire or desperation or some burning sense of wrongright _wrong_?  Or all three?

Control shattered, he couldn’t help himself from clutching Lex tight, almost crushing him... but it didn’t matter, because he couldn’t possibly harm Lex, not _Lex_ , with his ring as a safety net.  

Clark didn’t complain when Lex didn’t drop him off after all, redirecting the limo to the penthouse.  He certainly didn’t complain as he was pinned against the wall of the elevator, weakness searing through him as they flew to the top floor under Lex’s power.

Lex’s ringed hand dealt soft caresses of agony over his body, the fire that couldn’t escape through his eyes melding with the burn of Kryptonite until he couldn’t tell which was which, couldn’t tell where the alien stopped and the man began.

“Lex,” he said, frightened, gripping his friend’s shoulders with all the impotent strength of a kitten, but Lex held him tightly enough for both of them as the inferno built to immolation.

Clark cried out with real pain as he finally _finally_ lost his virginity, and he had never felt more like himself in his life.

***

Freud would probably have had a lot to say about helplessness being a turn-on for the most powerful being on the planet.

It certainly wasn’t hard to understand that with all the people Clark saved – all the damsels in distress he rescued who daily offered him anything and everything in thanks – he’d be somewhat inured to their charms.

But Clark decided that it definitely wasn’t right that he woke up sticky and satisfied from dream-memories of the first time Lex had stood across a doomsday device from him, bald head shining with sweat and storm-grey eyes shining with malice as he flipped open the lid of a lead-lined box and sent Superman to his knees.

He hadn’t felt aroused at the time, he was sure.

He wondered, now, when it was that Lex had worked out that his adolescent fixation on Lana was less to do with the girl and more to do with the necklace that made him feel almost human when he was near her.

Or if Lex had known all along, even though Clark had never understood it.

Lex probably had the perfect quote from Machiavelli lined up just for the occasion of Clark admitting it.

***

They were never together in public.  Or at least no more than they ever had been.  Instead, Lex was publicly romantically linked with one of his business partners, the press swallowing Lex’s flimsy cover story without a whisper of doubt, and Clark kept the Contessa’s name out of his and Lois’s corporate corruption story in thanks for her refusal to comment on the rumours.

Clark still hunched in his cheap suits and chunky glasses and shouted questions with the rest of the mudrakers at press conferences.  Lex still nodded his coldly polite hello-no-comment to Lois whenever he came to see Clark and found them together.

But in private, things were different.  And whenever Clark heard Lex’s voice and felt the burn, felt himself sink into the relief of dull, ordinary senses, he turned for him with a smile, glad to accept his brief hiatus from being constantly on call.

After a while, he hardly even noticed the accompanying pain anymore.

***

Lois was driving Clark slowly insane: she was obnoxious and rude and dismissive of him and desperately in love with Superman.

She was actually conscious when he rescued her from the people smugglers.  She nibbled on his earlobe as he flew her back to the mainland and he sank a little in the air, fighting the urge to give her a concussion himself so he could fly in peace.  It had always worked for Lex, after all.

He did set her down rather harder than usual and she staggered in her heels for a moment before her adoring gaze fixed on him again.

“Ms. Lane,” he said, all detached alien and not a trace of Clark Kent.  “Please refocus your affections on a member of your own species.  I can assure you that your repeated attempts to attract my attention will not change my mind and, in the meantime, I do not appreciate being used as your personal rescue service.”

He kept his steely mask in place as he watched her face crumple in horror and humiliation, then flew away feeling worse than he could have imagined he would.

He could still hear her quiet sobs, even from the alpine glacier where he went to sit and feel sorry for himself.  He considered going to see Lex, settling down on the couch in his office and simply reveling in the silence, but he couldn’t think of a good enough explanation to interrupt him in the middle of what he’d heard would be a very important conference call.

Eventually, the thought of what his mother would have said about his outburst sent him back to Lois, this time dressed as Clark.  He held her in his arms as she hammered her fists on his invulnerable chest and cried herself out.

***

He was becoming accustomed to waking up in Lex’s bed with the sun shining on his face, accustomed to sleeping the night through for the first time in too long, accustomed to being deaf to the cries for help that rang throughout the city.

Some nights he dreamed he could hear them and was just ignoring them.

The fact was, though, that the city somehow remained standing despite three months of its superhero taking a semi-sabbatical, and Clark thought that had to prove something.

***

The next day, Lois was still a little subdued.  She didn’t write the scathing article he’d half-feared about Superman, and she actually thanked Clark, once, when he brought her coffee.

It was exactly what he had hoped for, but Clark just knew it felt all wrong.  He arranged to have a bunch of yellow roses anonymously delivered to her desk at the Planet in an attempt to make her feel better.

He wished again for Lex’s muffling presence when he heard the way her heart sped up with hope as she fumbled the card out of its tiny envelope, only to see her face crumple at the lack of a signature.  He would never even have noticed that fraction of a second of misery without alien reflexes, he was sure.

Still feeling guilty, he tried again.  He took her to lunch at a little place that Lex had shown him, plying her with chocolate and good-humored small talk until she started to smile again.

Then he heard the alarm, and told her that the dryer at the Laundromat must have finished by now, so he’d better go pick up his clothes before someone else did.

***

When he first arrived on the scene, he felt a little betrayed, although he couldn’t pinpoint why.  It wasn’t as though he’d really expected Lex to change.  He’d set the alarm himself four months previously, but he’d almost given up on Lex returning to this particular illegal laboratory to be caught in the act.

It always bothered him that Lex felt part of his duties as Clark’s fated enemy included carrying out nefarious plots for his alter ego to foil, even in the face of their friendship.  He was sure that Lex thought his reasons were good, but Clark suspected it had more to do with having learned to love from Lionel Luthor than any real rational basis.  Thankfully, it had slipped into being just another one of the things they didn’t talk about, because Clark always walked away from their shouting matches about keeping secrets wondering when he’d become such a hypocrite.

“Luthor!” he called as he tracked the escaping billionaire to the roof.  “You’re going to prison this time!”

Lex’s eyes glittered down from the cockpit of his swiftly rising helicopter.  Clark closed the distance in a single bound and managed to hold onto the door for only a few seconds before he had to drop back to the rooftop.  His hands burned with a raw looking rash, making Clark feel vaguely ill as he watched the black paint shimmer with a familiar green tinge in the sunlight.

Then the building exploded around him.

By the time he’d fought his way free of the rubble, made sure there were no civilians trapped, and put out a small fire on his cape, Lex’s helicopter was long gone.

***

“Interesting day?” asked Lex, when Clark found him shooting pool in the den.

There was an edge in his voice at having his latest plot for world domination foiled, so Clark cast around for something he could say that didn’t involve either Superman or Lois.

“Not really,” he ended up shrugging as he pulled a cue from the rack.  “You?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” said Lex, hooded eyes holding Clark in the lie.  “You can take stripes.”

***

Clark had never actually got around to telling Lex that he was Superman.

They didn’t talk about it at all, but he never had to wonder if Lex knew.

It was harder to remember when Lois became a taboo subject as well.  Possibly it was around the same time that Clark managed to stop Lex from making his continual offers to get Clark a better job at LexCorp, because it wasn’t like Clark could help mentioning work when he talked about her.

He had to wonder whether they would still be friends if they ever threw out the unwritten rules and verbalised all the silent conversations and truces that had passed between them over the years.

Fortunately, they seemed to be getting better, recently, at the whole nonverbal communication thing.

***

As he and Lois investigated the scene of the destroyed lab on a tip-off from Superman, Clark eyed the debris and couldn’t help but admire the attention to detail Lex always showed.  It was as though someone had carefully and painstakingly put the entire building through a cheese grater.  But he had to wonder if he could have tried any harder to hold onto Lex’s escaping vehicle.  If he would have, had it been anyone but Lex.

Lois found an impossibly intact computer chip among the rubble nonetheless and set to tracking down its origins with a zeal that made the newsroom cower and Clark smile at the re-emergence of his partner.  Until he caught her staring at the unsigned card for the flowers once again with a contemplative half-smirk and realized that he’d unthinkingly passed on the tip to Lois as Superman.

When the trail led them to a LexCorp subsidiary, Clark reminded her it probably didn’t mean anything: LexCorp owned over eighty percent of Metropolis’s high tech companies, after all.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Smallville,” she brushed him off.  “Lex Luthor’s a philanthropist, not some sort of white-collar criminal.  He might be able to fool you, but Superman would let us know if he was up to anything shonky.”

Her eyes shone with faith in Superman, and Clark realised with a jolt that he should probably have felt guilty about lying to protect Lex.

***

The investigation eventually led them to a seemingly abandoned warehouse and a moment of truth.

They split up to search faster, and Clark found himself out on the roof, staring at a familiar sleek, green-black helicopter.

He immediately X-rayed the rest of the building and discovered that Lois was about to sneak into what was obviously Lex’s brand new laboratory.  The man himself was clearly recognizable despite the surgical mask and ridiculously cliché white lab coat.

He needed to get her out of there right then, or there’d be one more player in his private war with Lex.  She’d never listen to Clark; there was only one way he could do it.

In a flash of blue and red, Clark was there in front of her, arms folded across his chest, staring her down.  

“Superman!” she gasped.

“I hope you liked the flowers,” he told her, “and I’m sorry I lost my temper the other day.  Let’s go somewhere we can talk…”

She played hard to get for almost a full second before she was twining her arms around him, her breath hot and moist against his neck.  As they flew away, he wondered bitterly if she even remembered that she’d arrived there with Clark.

It was an hour before he could politely extricate himself and, when he made it back to the warehouse, Lex and his helicopter were gone again.  The room where the new laboratory had been was empty and only the lingering smell of industrial strength disinfectant gave any sign that it had ever existed.

***

Clark hadn’t bothered chasing down Lex’s helicopter and so, when his hearing cut in, it took a moment to place the sound made by the absence of its engines.

“ _Help, Superman!_ ” shouted Lex, his words sounding muffled by that subtle silent wrongness that pierced Clark’s brain, his voice choked with irritation, anger, and… there it was.  Fear.  “ _Clark..._ ”

Clark had no idea what excuse he’d used to Lois as he tore out of the room and spun into the suit in the men’s room of the Daily Planet.  He hadn’t even checked if anyone was watching.

He was there in a flash, high above the clouds where the sun seeped into his flesh, flooding him with life.  Then he saw it, remembered it, and knew it was more powerful than the sun, but he didn’t care as he flew towards the spiraling green-black helicopter.

Lex was in the doorway, holding on with white-knuckled hands, the skin of his face rippling as the wind tried to tear him loose from his plummeting coffin.  Clark managed to get a hand on one skid before the Kryptonite paint cut all but a fragment of his powers, and wrestled the helicopter to a near standstill more through sheer force of will than anything else.

“I can’t hold it,” he yelled over the buffeting wind.  “Take off the ring and jump!”

Lex looked at him, and there was no fear in his eyes, only resignation as he shook his head.  “No,” he mouthed back, and in the quick easy motion of a swimmer, he dived over the edge, the ring on his hand flashing in the sunlight.

Clark plunged into the cloud bank after him and Lex was in his arms again in a scant moment, the two of them falling faster than the spiralling helicopter.  But he couldn’t fly, not like this, not with the burn of Kryptonite so strong in his blood.

“Take it off!” panted Clark.

Lex shook his head and spoke calmly, as though they weren’t plummeting from the sky, as though the words weren’t being whipped from his lips by the rush of air past their bodies, as though they hadn’t just emerged from the cloud banks with the buildings rushing up to meet them faster than a speeding bullet.

“It’s just green glass,” he said.  “I haven’t worn Kryptonite for months.”

For a moment more, they fell.

Then Clark looked into Lex’s eyes and _believed_.

***

Lex clung close to his neck as they flew – he’d never really managed to get over his fear of flying, even if he'd more than learned to cover it.  Clark couldn’t imagine what it must have cost him to jump.  They didn’t speak until they were back on the rooftop of the penthouse.

“Lex!” said Clark, and it was a question; it was an affirmation; it was a demand for an explanation; it was a deep suspicion that he already knew.

“Take me to bed,” said Lex, an odd kind of choke in his throat, and he cut off Clark’s protests with a kiss.  “Please.”

Clark didn’t put Lex down until they were at his bed, floating together above the covers, and Lex was on him immediately, pulling at his suit, pushing close against him.  Clark wanted to ask him what was wrong, but the words stuck in his throat.  He ran his hands over Lex’s body, instinctively leashing his strength and holding the fire behind his eyes, leaving not so much as a single bruise on his fragile lover’s pale skin.

He rolled them so that he was on top, settled them onto the mattress, and Lex didn’t protest, looking up at him with wild, wet eyes.  Clark didn’t understand what was wrong, but he _did_ understand that he wouldn’t hurt Lex, that Lex had taught him how to be human, and he could hardly stop himself from crying along with his lover at the realization.

There didn’t exist words to say thank you, thank you, I love you, thank you, I love you, I love you – but he communicated it with every inch of his skin and every thrust of his body and for the two of them it was all that was necessary.

***

Clark’s dreams were confused.  He was digging Cassandra’s graves, and he was burying Mom and Dad and Lana and Pete and Chloe, but then all the names blurred into one and it was Clark Kent’s grave, only it was Lex lying at the bottom, looking up at him with the same wet, pleading eyes as Clark filled it in again, and the rain came down, sticky and red, plastering his cape to his legs and he woke up sweaty and scared and alone.

***

He flew home for a shower and some clean clothes before returning to LexCorp Tower to look for Lex.

His reception wasn’t quite what he’d expected.

“What are you _talking_ about?” he demanded.

It was his Superman voice, as much a mask as the suit was, and it wasn’t fair to Lex, but those were the only masks he had and Lex’s eyes and voice were so _cold_.

“Clark,” Lex said.  “You’re not in love with me.  I’m just the only one you’ve ever been able to let go with.  Now you’ve learned how to control yourself properly.  You can be with whoever you want.”

“Lex!”

“I’ve fixed your little problem.”  Lex busied himself at his laptop, as though Clark wasn’t worth his attention.  “I won’t tell you I didn’t enjoy it.  But it’s over.  Go chase after the woman you really love.”

“But Lois isn’t…” stuttered Clark, and knew instantly that he’d made a mistake.

Lex’s eyes weren’t cold when they turned to face him, they were flashing angrily and there was a tightness there that Clark had previously only ever seen after one of Lionel’s more impressive feats of emotional torture.  The idea that he could cause Lex that much pain hit Clark like a blow, and he staggered backwards.

“Lois _is_ ,” spat Lex.  “You know it, I know it, and if I won’t be second-best to Superman, you can be sure I won’t be to your partner.  Go away, Clark.  I don’t want to talk to you right now.”

Clark went.

***

When he arrived at his desk at The Planet, he found the invitation to Lex’s wedding to the Contessa del Portenza among his mail – postmarked the previous day – and broke the handle off his coffee mug.

That afternoon, he got the phone call asking him to serve as best man.

Lex stonewalled and redirected his questions like a professional – which Clark had to suppose that he was, after all.  After hanging up, Clark realised that he’d agreed without getting anything personal out of Lex at all.  And that the receiver had his fingerprints imprinted on it.

That evening, after patrol, he ended up floating outside Lex’s penthouse, listening to his easy banter with the Contessa.  They exchanged lies and threats of a war of mutual extinction coated in sugar-sweet gentility and innuendo, and Clark felt completely out of his depth when he realised he was probably only noticing one poison-tipped barb in ten.

He wondered bitterly if Lex actively sought out people who wanted to kill him as partners, or if wanting to kill Lex was simply a by-product of sleeping with him.  He decided that it had to be the latter, since he couldn’t remember wanting to kill Lex before this.

***

His research turned up the controlling interest the Contessa had bought in LexCorp.  He wrote an expose on insider trading and what the gossip columnists were calling a corporate fairy-tale, then deleted the file and tore up his notes.

He took Lois to lunch and held a stiff posture and fixed smile for the benefit of Lex’s tail.

It got easier when Lois began to expound upon her latest theory about corruption in the Mayor’s office with a piece of spinach stuck between her teeth, and his laugh lost its forced edge as he vainly tried to direct her towards it.

***

Lex’s ring definitely had real Kryptonite in it now, a huge green crystal that took Clark’s breath away whenever he was in the same room.

The urge to kill Lex was long gone, which was a good thing, since he’d given Superman several opportunities in the previous few weeks.  

Clark wondered, though, if it was just wishful thinking to imagine that Lex’s easily thwarted plots and continual need to be rescued from them were really an attempt to keep Clark’s attention even while he pushed him away with both hands.

And he wondered if the real reason Lex’s wives always made it to within an inch of killing him was that he was suicidal with a broken heart.

***

Lois browbeat Clark into bringing her as his date to the wedding, and she happily used the chance to ambush various members of the upper echelons who’d been successfully ducking her interviews for years.

He managed to waylay her before she could interview Lex and the Contessa on their way to the limousine, for which he may have got a glance of silent thanks from Lex.  Or it may have been a death glare.  It was sometimes hard to tell with Lex.

He told himself he was just worried about Lex’s safety when he X-rayed the limousine for bombs and got an eyeful of the happy couple in their first moments alone since the wedding.  He didn’t like the way she was looking at him, so he made an internal plan to drop Lois off and hover outside the honeymoon suite to keep an eye on his friend.

But Lois derailed his best intentions by having a few too many glasses of champagne at the reception and jumping him in the hallway outside her apartment.

As her lips touched his, the crushing feeling in his chest deepened, and turned fierce.  This was what _Lex_ had wanted, after all.

***

Later, while Lois slept in his arms, he caressed her skin with gentle fingers.  She was unmarked despite everything, and he remembered his plan.  He wondered if Lex had managed to survive the night and felt guilty, for a moment, for deserting his friend.  Then he remembered that this was Lex’s choice; if Lex wanted his help, he'd proved he could call for it.  It was hardly Clark’s responsibility to spy on his best friend on his wedding night, when Lex had made his wishes perfectly clear.  He pulled Lois closer against his chest.

When she woke in the morning, they showered together.

He took off his glasses and slicked back his hair under the jet of lukewarm water, laying himself bare as he unfolded from his habitual hunch.  When she saw the truth, she went to hit him, hard, and he had to catch her hand before she could hurt herself.

He flew them both to a deserted island where she could list out his many and varied flaws at the top of her lungs without the risk of being overheard.

The warm sun beat down on them both, suffusing Clark with its power, but that wasn’t the only reason he was smiling in the face of her rage.

At least with Lois, it would be easier to work out what she wanted from him.

***

Clark sometimes wondered whether Lex would have made him any happier than Lois.  Then he had to wonder whether it made him a bad friend to wonder that, rather than whether Lex would have been any happier with him than with the Contessa.

It was with a perverse sense of symmetry that he invited Lex to stand by his side at his wedding.

On the day, he gasped and sweated his nerves out and blamed Lex’s ring and Lex’s smirk and Lex’s stupid nobility complex, especially since it only seemed to apply to him.  He wondered if Lex would run away with him and knew he wouldn’t when he picked up the report of a bomb in an elementary school and had to excuse himself.

Somehow, the green glass hurt more than the Kryptonite ever had.

The bride’s car circled the block twenty-eight times, and Lex kept the congregation seated by offering them each a thousand dollars for every ten minutes they waited.

Clark spun back into his formal attire in the vestry.  He only realized that he’d forgotten his glasses when Lex stepped out of the corner and he saw his reflection in the other man’s eyes.

For a moment, as they looked at each other, Clark fiddled with the arms of his glasses and wondered if Lex would believe him if he just told him that he didn’t want… that he’d _never_ wanted…  

Then Lex made a minor adjustment to Clark’s bow-tie and clapped him on the shoulder.  Clark turned away to replace his glasses, feeling unaccountably like a fraud as he hunched into the persona he’d worn most of his life.   

Caught playing the fool once more, he stumbled, and stepped out into his future, where the diamond on Lois’s finger sparkled as bright and hard and empty as Lex’s congratulatory smile.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry. *wince* This has been on my hard drive unposted for nine years, because, well, you've read the ending, you know why, but they just... grrrr, wouldn't listen to me. Megabat has helped me work out that the only way to make it better is to write a fix-it sequel, which is well underway. So if you're as disappointed as me about what they made me do, keep an eye out for that. :)
> 
>  **Edit::** Fix-it sequel posted. Things get better, I promise. :)


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